Friday, December 23, 2005

Rajiv Shukla on Sourav

Indian Express has got the BCCI vice president (and my former colleague in Sunday Observer) on its roster of columnists; in the latest instalment, he makes passing mention of the Sourav affair.

Protesting against Sourav Ganguly’s exclusion from the Indian cricket team, a senior MP from West Bengal had this to say — Sourav is Bengali, and I am Bengali, therefore I will take the matter to Parliament. What my respected colleague Gurudas Dasgupta needs to realise is that Sourav was the captain of the Indian cricket team, and among the greatest ones at that. Sourav’s fans were never limited to the state of West Bengal. Coming from influential persons such as Dasgupta, such statements of deep-rooted parochialism actually cause harm to Sourav.